eli5: Why does USA have military bases and soldiers in many foreign countries?
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In military strategy, there is something called the ‘loss of strength gradient’: in essence, the farther a military is operating from “home”, the less power they can project to that area. “Home”, usually within their own borders, provides reliable logistics, familiar systems, nearby resources (including, for personnel, familial and social resources), local industry, extremely high situational awareness, and other factors that improve the performance of the unit.
The purpose placing a base overseas is to reduce this ‘loss of strength gradient’ by extending, in some way, the region where it means to be ‘home’. By placing permanent bases in Germany, for instance, many of the benefits that US military forces have operating in the United States are replicated over seas, and the loss of strength gradient starts from Germany, rather than the continental United States.
Of course, a US base exists to further the interests of the US government and its foreign policy, and a host country does not have an intrinsic motivation to host the US. Therefore, the US typically has to offer the host country some other benefit in order to receive basing rights. This may include mutual defense, including nuclear security, in the case of NATO allies, Japan or South Korea, or other allies. It may be a purely economic benefit (ie, that US servicemembers and the Department of Defense will spend a lot of money in the local area, although often significant infrastructure costs are taken up by the host country, depending on their geopolitical relationship to the United States), or some other aspect of mutual defense.
While placing soldiers in another country is often colloquially called ‘basing’ them there, frequently there is no foreign base in a formal sense. If the reason for placing soldiers overseas is to complete a *specific mission* together with the host ( rather than a broader geopolitical sense of mutual benefit), even if that mission is permanent, then they will usually share facilities with the host country. For instance, a fair number of Canadian airmen are permanently stationed in the United States, and American airmen in Canada, in order to operate NORAD. However, neither operates a base in the other country as NORAD is a bilateral command, such that each is integrated into the host facilities (eg, Canadian airmen at Peterson Space Force Base, a US installation, and US airmen at 22 Wing – North Bay, a Canadian installation).
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